A Century of Covenants and Conditions

For Robert Rollock, there is no Covenant of Grace without Christ: the ground of the Covenant is Christ the Mediator: the primary promise of the Covenant is the righteousness of Christ; and the condition of the Covenant is the faith which apprehends, or embraces, Christ.

Rollock notes that the name Covenant of Grace might indicate that the Covenant is without any conditions. He accepts that idea in so far that it excludes all conditions based upon the strength of nature or upon works naturally just and good. He will allow for conditions which are consistent with a gracious and free Covenant. The only such condition he finds is God’s free gift of faith. However, he is careful to emphasise the object of that faith: Christ and God’s free mercy in Him. The condition of the Covenant of Grace is faith which apprehends, or embraces, Christ.

For David Dickson, the ground of the Covenant of Grace, or Reconciliation, is the Covenant of Redemption. He was one of the first to speak of a Covenant of Redemption. For Dickson, the promise is that whosoever in the sense of their own sinfulness shall receive Christ offered in the gospel for righteousness and life shall have him and all the benefits purchased by Him. The condition is faith which receives Christ for righteousness and life. However, that actual condition, which is a gift from God, is accompanied by the pre-condition of an acknowledgment of sin and inability and a post-condition of the commitment to accept Christ’s government and to obey His commands. Dickson says that a true faith in Christ presupposes the former and draws after it the latter.

For Samuel Rutherford, the ground of the Covenant of Grace, or Reconciliation, is the Covenant of Redemption, or Suretyship. Christ as surety and cautioner are important ideas for him. The promise is the forgiveness of our sins, renovation of our nature, and eternal life. The condition is a saving and true faith: a living faith which lays hold of Christ as our righteousness. The Covenant of Grace is a free Covenant because Christ, as Cautioner, has paid our debt and made us believe.

For James Durham, the Covenant of Grace is not quite another thing from the Covenant of Redemption. The Covenant of Grace is the offer of the salvation secured by the Covenant of Redemption. Like Rutherford, he emphasises that Christ is the cautioner for the elect. It is important to him that the condition of the Covenant of Grace and the instrument of justification be treated together. Faith is properly and peculiarly both the condition of the Covenant of Grace and the instrument of Justification.

John Brown of Wamphray, while writing more about the instrument of Justification, says that faith is the condition of the Covenant of Grace; however, before describing that positively, he gives ten ways in which it would be erroneous to describe it as a condition. The result is that faith is not a legal antecedent condition, nor is it a proper or potestative condition, but only a consequent or evangelical condition, denoting a prescribed order and method of receiving the thing promised.

For Robert Traill, the Covenant of Redemption is a conditional covenant and the Covenant of Grace is absolute. Rather than call faith a condition, he calls it a requirement; and he says that the faith required for sealing one’s interest in the Covenant is promised in it.

So, what changed over 100 years? In some ways, not much. The ground of the Covenant of Redemption has not changed, it has been fleshed out. The Covenant of Redemption is the answer to the question: What do mean by “Christ the Mediator”?

The promise is sometimes stated in terms of salvation and sometimes in terms of the Saviour. But sooner or later in the definition of the Covenant of Grace, the righteousness of Christ is mentioned.

The word condition has always been problematic and needed qualification. What is its place in a Covenant of Free Grace? Abandoning it, as Traill does, is not as helpful as it might seem. Using requirement in its place does not change the meaning as much as it changes the register. Nevertheless, the change in register is a positive thing. Whether the speaking of requirement rather than condition is enough to make the Covenant of Grace absolute is another question. Yet, in Traill’s position, with all the trouble that Baxter’s false views of conditionality and conditions had brought, who would not take a slash at the Gordian Knot?

There is general agreement that the faith required is a gift from God. It is the fact that this condition or requirement is not a work of nature but a gift of God which means the word condition must be qualified. Durham, writing in the 1650s, says that faith is a proper condition because he would, in effect, distinguish between Dickson’s condition of faith as a strict or formal condition on the one hand and Dickson’s post-condition of obedience as a condition taken widely or materially on the other. Brown of Wamphray, writing probably in the 1670s, says that faith is not a proper condition because, strictly speaking, it is a gift. Again, as orthodox opposition to Baxterianism grew, words became casualties. As the always problematic idea of condition was being further defined, the ambiguous word proper had to go.

A lesson learned at the turn of the 18th century was that when one complicates the condition of the Covenant of Grace, one also complicates the instrument of Justification. At the turn of the 21st century, the same complications resulted in the same heresy.